Obama Unaware as U.S. Spied on World Leaders: Officials

By Siobhan Gorman, Adam Entous

Angela Merkel with French President François Hollande on Thursday

European Pressphoto Agency

WASHINGTON—The National Security Agency ended a program used to spy on German Chancellor Angela Merkel and a number of other world leaders after an internal Obama administration review started this summer revealed to the White House the existence of the operation, U.S. officials said.

Officials said the internal review turned up NSA monitoring of some 35 world leaders, in the U.S. government’s first public acknowledgment that it tapped the phones of world leaders. European leaders have joined international outrage over revelations of U.S. surveillance of Ms. Merkel’s phone and of NSA’s monitoring of telephone call data in France.

The White House cut off some monitoring programs after learning of them, including the one tracking Ms. Merkel and some other world leaders, a senior U.S. official said. Other programs have been slated for termination but haven’t been phased out completely yet, officials said.

The account suggests President Barack Obama went nearly five years without knowing his own spies were bugging the phones of world leaders. Officials said the NSA has so many eavesdropping operations under way that it wouldn’t have been practical to brief him on all of them.

They added that the president was briefed on and approved of broader intelligence-collection “priorities,” but that those below him make decisions about specific intelligence targets.

The senior U.S. official said that the current practice has been for these types of surveillance decisions to be made at the agency level. “These decisions are made at NSA,” the official said. “The president doesn’t sign off on this stuff.” That protocol now is under review, the official added.

NSA spokeswoman Vanee Vines said NSA based its operations on priorities set across the U.S. government. “The agency’s activities stem from the National Intelligence Priorities Framework, which guides prioritization for the operation, planning and programming of U.S. intelligence analysis and collection,” she said.

The administration didn’t end all operations involving world leaders following this summer’s revelations because some of the programs are producing intelligence of use to the U.S.

It could not be learned Sunday how many of the eavesdropping operations were stopped, or who is on the list of leaders still under surveillance.

Officials said the U.S. already has stopped collection efforts against Ms. Merkel and a number of other world leaders. The U.S. has decided to stop eavesdropping on another group of world leaders but those collection efforts haven’t been completely cut off yet.

The U.S. is no longer monitoring any phone numbers associated with Ms. Merkel. The White House publicly has said it isn’t and won’t monitor Ms. Merkel’s communications but has declined to say whether it monitored those communications in the past.

A spokesman for Ms. Merkel declined to comment, but the chancellor last week complained to Mr. Obama about reports of phone monitoring.

Officials said the effort to remove certain world leaders from monitoring has been complicated by the fact that communications are so interlinked. While Ms. Merkel and some world leaders are no longer being monitored, for instance, the U.S. may still be monitoring many of their foreign counterparts. So communications involving some leaders who aren’t directly subject to U.S. monitoring still may be swept up by the NSA, officials said.

The new U.S. account confirms elements of a report last week. The U.K.’s Guardian newspaper reported that 35 world leaders were under surveillance, citing a document leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

It is unclear how far back the tapping of Ms. Merkel dates. Germany’s Der Spiegel newsweekly, citing NSA documents Mr. Snowden leaked, reported the monitoring dates back to 2002, before she was elected. If so, it is less likely NSA would have had a reason to brief the Obama White House without a specific reason to do so, because it would have been seen as one of many continuing surveillance programs at the agency.

This summer, President Obama launched two reviews—an internal one and an external one. He highlighted them in a speech in August as part of a series of measures being taken to respond to the domestic uproar over NSA’s extensive spying practices in the U.S.

Those reviews have taken on growing international significance in recent weeks as top administration officials repeatedly cite them in response to anger from European leaders following revelations about Ms. Merkel and about surveillance of phone calls in France.

Most recently, the White House referred to the intelligence reviews in its statement last week on Mr. Obama’s call with Ms. Merkel about allegations of NSA spying.

Traditionally the U.S. and four other countries—known as the five eyes—don’t spy on each other. The five eyes are the U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The administration reviews are largely focused on countries other than the five eyes, officials said.

The reviews may take on an even greater role because the NSA is set to lose both its director, Gen. Keith Alexander, and its deputy, John C. Inglis. Both are scheduled to step down in coming months.

The internal review, among different U.S. national security agencies, will be informed by findings from the external review, which is expected to deliver its final report in December, said White House spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden.

The external review, being carried out mostly by former government officials, has been criticized for being too close to the Obama administration and to intelligence interests.

Officials involved in the review have met with a wide range of interested parties, including Mr. Obama, lawmakers and privacy groups, said current and former officials, who add that, despite criticism of government coziness, the group plans to take a hard look at the NSA’s practices.

Its members include Richard Clarke, who was a counterterrorism chief for former Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush; former Central Intelligence Agency Deputy Director Michael Morell; University of Chicago Law School professor Geoffrey Stone; former White House regulatory official Cass Sunstein; and former Clinton and Obama administration economic and privacy official Peter Swire.

Panel members are spending multiple days a week on the panel’s work, a person familiar with the review said. “It’s actually a big deal,” this person said. “It’s the kind of time where independent recommendations like these could actually happen.”

The group’s broad mandate is to advise the president on how best to employ NSA’s spy capabilities in light of changing technology, while weighing issues of foreign policy, national security, privacy, public trust and the need to prevent leaks.

Current and former officials familiar with the group’s efforts thus far said they are evaluating the management of NSA and agency security as well as larger policy issues.

They are also discussing NSA’s organizational structure. One question is whether it should be headed by a military officer or a civilian leader. Its director has traditionally been from the military, with a civilian deputy.

The group plans to issue an unclassified report. Its deadline for completion is Dec. 15.

Separately, Ms. Vines said on Sunday that a report in the German newspaper Bild am Sonntag reporting Mr. Obama personally authorized the tapping of Ms. Merkel in 2010, and was briefed on it by Gen. Alexander, was false.